Cat in a Red Hot Rage Read online

  “Just when I have gotten Ma Barker and her street gang moved to the CR for some TLC of a human sort? No way.”

  “Speaking of ‘CR,’ is Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina on this new murder case? And what is with all the dames in purple wall-to-wallow T-shirts and scarlet wide-brims. You would think this was a vintage car convention.”

  “It is a vintage person convention,” I tell Louise, “and there has already been a murder. I did intend to concentrate on Mr. Max’s sudden fall from grace, quite literally, but I have had my mitts full on this end.”

  Oddly enough, Miss Midnight Louise does not jump down my throat for once.

  “I have been over the Neon Nightmare for the past day and a half like a spider on a web, and that turns out to be an apt figure of speech. The place is riddled with secret rooms and passages.”

  “I am not surprised, Louise, having already explored that territory. The building is designed as a pyramid and you know what mazes of treasures and dead bodies lay hidden inside those for centuries.”

  “That is exactly it, Daddikins.”

  I cringe at her latest sarcastic endearment for me, but I listen to her report.

  “Mr. Max’s gear and illusions are housed up under the pointed inner roof, but the angled walls have all sorts of rooms, visited by all sorts of persons.”

  “Such as?” I have some insight into the inner workings of the Neon Nightmare but want to see what the chit has discovered on her own.

  She leans close and whispers in my ear. Too bad she is not an Ashleigh sister. “Other magicians. Some of them had seen him fall and they are not alarmed.”

  “How so?”

  “They think it was a ruse, that he is not dead.”

  “Glory, hallelujah. The newspaper item reported he had died, but perhaps the press rushed to judgment. You cannot believe everything you read in the press. Sometimes you cannot believe anything.”

  “If the Synth is right. They also think Mr. Max was the Phantom Mage. That he robbed the exhibition of the Czar’s Scepter, and then vanished to avoid the pursuit of the law.”

  “Makes sense in the usual devious Mr. Max manner.”

  “They think he will return in time, to join them in their aims.”

  “Which are?”

  “Do not ask me. They were not about to lay them out for whoever might be eavesdropping. There are aims, and these people have them. Mr. Max was supposed to be part of all this and they still hope that he is merely a clever criminal who will return to their treacherous bosoms.”

  “And you think, Louise? That he is still alive and will return?”

  “I think the jury is out on that one, but if he is dead and anyone is to blame, it is one or more of those so-called magicians who own, operate, and haunt Neon Nightmare and may have secret plans of their very own.”

  Chapter 10

  Mad Hattery

  Temple was still super pleased with herself for having aced Electra out of the Lalique Suite without any charges being levied.

  When they rendezvoused again by the registration area, Electra cooed over the dainty charms of Temple’s new pink hat.

  “Enough girly noises,” Temple said. “We’ve got to sit down and hammer out this murder situation. The police may be playing hands-off at the moment, but you’re still their most viable suspect. The woman was your long-ago rival, after all.”

  Electra grimaced. “As I said, I didn’t know who she was until I saw the name tag and then I did feel like decking her. You notice that I said ‘decked,’ not ‘killed.’ ”

  “How reassuring.”

  “Are you mad at me, Temple?”

  “No. I’m mad at the cops. I thought Alch knew better. Su is always ready to roll at any hint of guilt, but I always thought of Morrie Alch as a favorite uncle—”

  “I am not interested in your favorite uncle, dear girl! I need an alibi. I need a sharp defense lawyer.” Electra took a deep breath. “Sorry, I’m frazzled down to my purple roots. What now, Pink Pussycat?” she asked.

  “We go home and you tell me even more about your third husband and his second wife. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt if you told me about all your husbands and any other wives in common you might have out there.

  “Then we discuss every second of your involvement in this convention and the Red Hat Sisterhood.”

  “Oh, my, just those two subjects are a book and a half.”

  “Then we need to figure out how the cops found out the victim was your ex’s wife so fast.”

  “Oh! That’s right. Someone must have squealed on me.”

  “We say ‘prejudiced the authorities against you.’ ‘Squealed’ went out with Edward J. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney.”

  “Well, those boys may be dead, but I’m not. We dames outlive ’em.”

  “Sad but true,” Temple said, “and very interesting.”

  “How so?”

  “Maybe your ex died and something’s at stake, like his estate.”

  “I wouldn’t have any interest in that.”

  “No, but maybe your successor did.”

  “Oh! Elmore always was a hustler. Maybe he hustled himself into something lucrative and she inherited.”

  “Who would stand to gain by her death?”

  Electra’s skin took on a lavender hue to match her purple hair.

  “That would be Elmore’s and my only son, Curtiss.”

  “Oh. I guess we’d better look elsewhere then, Electra.”

  “Yes. He’s a good kid, Temple. Well, good young man.”

  “And where does he live now?”

  “Tucson, last I knew.”

  “And Elmore?”

  “Reno.”

  “I thought you met and married him in Florida. He moved to Nevada, really?”

  “Last I heard from Curtiss. We usually only talk by phone on holidays and birthdays.”

  Temple nodded sympathetically. Families were far-flung nowadays, although she could wish that young Curtiss was more far-flung from the Las Vegas scene of this crime than Tucson.

  She’d have to get Electra home to the Circle Ritz, sit right down, and draw out a family tree. With five ex-spouses and assorted offspring, that would be a big job.

  “The way it was,” Electra explained in her cool, shadowed penthouse living room, “is that my dad ran out on the family. I was raised by my mom and a stepdad, and he was funny.”

  “Tell me you don’t mean ‘funny’ the way I think you do,” Temple said.

  “I do. Only back then nobody admitted it. I ran away from high school before I graduated. First there was Darren. That fizzled mighty quick. I then married Billy on the road to Daytona Beach. We split about six months later. I kept finding guys who were going to take me ‘away from all this,’ except ‘all this’ was myself and my background. Elmore Lark hit me in my early thirties. He was a cardsharp and hustler, but he cleaned up good in those days. By the time I found out he was a two-timer, I was ready to escape with my sanity and his last name.”

  “Was he unfaithful to you with this dead woman?”

  “Hell yes, the little hussy. And they—or she—had the nerve to send me a wedding notice. That’s what got me into the wedding chapel business when I moved to Las Vegas later, that tacky card from a chapel out on Highway 95. I decided I wanted to give people ceremonies to remember. Maybe it would keep them together longer.”

  “You think so?”

  “Maybe not, but at least they might have some nice memories. I didn’t have nice memories of most of my marriages, and I finally realized it was because I didn’t have nice memories of my family life.”

  “Gosh, Electra. I’ve always seen you as this energetic entrepreneur, not as a desperate housewife racing from marriage to marriage.”

  “You mean you always thought I was a free spirit, not a Stepford Wife. Why do you think I evolved into a free spirit?”

  “So you knew about her becoming the new Mrs. Elmore Lark?”

  “Yeah, as I said, from the cheesy wedding anno
uncement photo she just had to send me almost thirty years ago. But she didn’t look at all like herself in her Pink Lady outfit here and now.”

  “Not a great alibi. Okay,” Temple said. “What about the other ex-husbands? Don’t you want to know where they might be?”

  “No,” Electra said. “Tasmania or Outer Mongolia would be good.”

  “You are not a great advertisement for the Lovers’ Knot Wedding Chapel attached to this very building.”

  “Maybe not, but why are you so interested?”

  Temple twisted a pale blond bleached lock around her forefinger. “I might want your services. Sometime.”

  “You? Married? When? I thought Max, your main man, had to remain undercover and under the covers.”

  “He does. Nothing’s changed there.”

  “Oh, then. Oh. My dear!” Electra grabbed Temple’s right hand and crushed it to her large, soft, purple-knit bosom. “It’s that darling boy Matt! At last!”

  “Darling, but not a boy, Electra.” Temple extracted her hand. “We really don’t have time to discuss my love life when your formerly wedded life could get you tried on a count of murder one.”

  “Irises. No canna lilies. Violets? No, something showy, bird of paradise! Music. He loves Bob Dylan, did you know? Say, there’s that one with a wedding march tempo! The one about his love speaking in silence—”

  “I’ve never spoken in silence, Electra.”

  “You could start. Certainly you’ll have to be silent for the wedding vows until called upon.” Electra’s blue eyes teared up. “I feel like . . . a matchmaker.”

  Temple was remembering the song Electra had mentioned. “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” It did have a solemn, ceremonial tempo, and the singer’s “love” was “true” as fire and ice. That line made her squirm instead of smile. She’d warned Matt: breaking up was hell to do.

  “Electra! Forget my fantasy wedding. Your ex-love walks in anonymity and where is the dirty dog if his second wife is dead? I’d love to make him suspect number one.”

  “Elmore? He wouldn’t hurt a flypaper.”

  “Not what we want to hear, or say. I want to know the name of all of your exes, and all post-you liaisons they had, including wives, and any descendants.”

  “That’s a lot of family tree to come up with on the fly, my dear.”

  “Your family. Your tree. Your job. I’m heading back to the Crystal Phoenix to find out what the gossip is. With that many women flocking around, it’s got to be choice.”

  Electra had sat herself down at her forties blond mahogany dining table, lined note sheet and fountain pen in hand.

  “You go ahead, dear. I’ll alert my Red Hat Sisterhood chapter to rush to the scene to assist you.”

  “Really, Electra, I doubt I need their help when I’ve got the Fontana brothers at my beck and call. And my aunt Kit.”

  “But my chapter members will fit in where the Fontana boys won’t.”

  Temple sighed and headed back. The last thing she needed was to be drowned in red and purple until death-solved did them part.

  Chapter 11

  Old Flame-Points

  I must admit that middle-aged human dames in extreme colors are not particularly attractive to me, unless they are wearing feathers.

  And most of these Red Hat Sisterhood attendees are.

  Hubba hubba!

  There is enough feather flaunting around here to keep me on the prowl and ready to pounce for a month.

  I cannot share this personal peccadillo with my partner in crime solving at Midnight Inc. Investigations. Miss Midnight Louise is the straitlaced sort who disapproves of shenanigans. And all these Red Hat Sisterhood ladies have come to Las Vegas to have shenanigans.

  Me, I am a shamus and we shamuses like shenanigans.

  So I bob and weave through this plethora of feathered feminine pulchritude milling in the Crystal Phoenix lobby and beyond. Alas, my short stature often gets me overlooked. Who made tall dudes king? Besides some Big and Tall Man shop?

  Well, that “man” part is a bit of a handicap for me too.

  Although my heart goes out to my Miss Temple as she struggles to keep this major celebration event happy despite the intervention of ugly human emotions resulting in murder, I have my own fish to fry.

  Now that Louise is off following up on her Mr. Max fixation, I make my way over miles of casino floor to the pool out back again, where once I hung up my shingle as house detective, and where under the towering canna lilies, I received clients.

  Of course, my old stomping grounds are only a huff and a puff away from the Crystal Phoenix pool area. I cannot admit a partiality to coconut oil. Fish oil is another kettle of . . . well, you know.

  I gaze into the limpid depths of the carp pond. I watch the mermaid seductions of fluid fin and tail. Koi. Each one worth a month or more of my Miss Temple’s employ. Once I hunted here, simply hungry, and their worth was the equal of my survival. Now that I am established, I understand that I cannot dine on EpiKorean delicacies unless I pay for them in advance.

  Such is the price of success.

  Still, I miss the good old days of daring survival. I miss hankering to move above my station in life.

  What reminds me of this is the sight of Miss Savannah Ashleigh sunning her silicone and collagen in a string bikini. “String” is the word for MSA. I am more attracted by the two pink canvas carriers under her lounge chair and her coconut-oil dripping body. That woman needs an oil pan change!

  I edge over the hot tiles despite my worries.

  Two carriers, sizzling hot pink. Two residents, both pink at the ears and nose, or just hot-tempered.

  I approach on velvet paws, sniff carefully. I look in one carrier and see my once-smitten now-snooty diva passed out colder than the Crystal Phoenix’s buffet-line salmon.

  I butt canvas with the other carrier.

  A brick-red purebred nose pushes against its black mesh side.

  “Louie?” a low voice whispers on a hint of pure Persian purr.

  “Solange?”

  “Louie!”

  “Solange!”

  It is your classic noir dialogue. Full of unsaid . . . little nothings.

  “Yvette is in the adjacent carrier,” Solange points out, literally sticking a pale scimitar of nail through the mesh in the right direction.

  “I saw. So I should care?”

  “She will not waken. She is so high-strung that our mistress gives her Prozac for her nerves.”

  “I do not approve of doping animal companions, but in this case it permits us to conduct our affairs in confidence.”

  “Oh, Louie.”

  “Oh, Solange.”

  “I am sorry. I do not want you to see me now. I am forced to wear this pansy hat of red and purple. I do not think it flatters my coloring.”

  “Your coloring goes with everything, especially . . . black.”

  “Oh, Louie.”

  “Oh, Solange.”

  “I cannot . . . betray my sister.”

  “Betray? No. I merely need an on-event guide.”

  “First, you must free me.”

  I do not have these mini-saber-tooth canines for nothing. I use one to pull down the zipper of her container.

  Miss Solange steps out, a muff of glorious golden fur tipped with the divine color, black.

  Her petite face is surmounted by a bonnet of purple straw covered with purple pansies and crimson roses. She looks like a Victorian Valentine’s Day postcard.

  I tell her so.

  “My, you are well traveled, Louie. I do not believe that I have ever seen a Victorian Valentine’s Day postcard.”

  “They are all very feminine and elaborate, like you and the Red Hat ladies.”

  “My mistress will be distraught about my unauthorized liberty.”

  I snort, despite the delicate company. “Your mistress is sucking up to those annoying Mexican hairless dogs, the better to pass as Paris Hilton and her ilk. Taco Belle indeed! Cheesy, cheesy, cheesy!�
�

  “We have felt relegated to second place of late.”

  “You and—?”

  “My sister Yvette,” she whispers in my ear, so close that her vibrissae exchange feints with my vibrissae. (Whiskers to you human types out there.)

  This is a very titillating conversation. “Your sister Yvette,” I tell her, “is in my bad books now.”

  “You mean for her slurs against your associate who may be a blood relative?”

  “Right,” I say, knowing that the only way Miss Midnight Louise will be an admitted blood relative of mine is if we mix it up.

  However, since Miss Midnight Louise now has my job of house detective at the Crystal Phoenix, the only way we could come to blows is if she got between me and my koi. And I have sworn off the expensive show fish. Too big and chewy for the refined palate of a dude-about-town.

  “I find Midnight Louise very pretty and agreeable,” Solange says.

  Well, that is Solange’s generous take on a brutal world, and who is to say it is not superior to my own cynical point of view, honed by my sharp incisors?

  “If a guy has got to have a partner,” I concede, “she is pretty okay.”

  “Louie!” Solange shivers until her thickly furred coat collar tickles my shoulder. Somebody ought to outlaw that move. “You play the tough guy but you are all pussycat underneath.”

  Not all, baby. Oh, well. I am supposed to be the gentleman here, not to mention the private dick enlisting a house spy.

  “Now, here are the names I need you to recognize, Solange. Just let the ladies pick you up and pet you, and keep those shell-pink little inner ears perked and recording what they say.”

  She nods soberly and follows me over the hot tiles to the air-conditioned dim interior of the Crystal Phoenix.

  Cacophony and voices echo off all the hard lobby surfaces, marble, wood, granite, glass. Scooters bearing Red Hat ladies dart over the shiny marble floor like water bugs.

  We need to be on our toes, making like Mexican jumping beans to avoid getting our nether members run over.

  “I see what you mean, Louie. This place is a death-by-misadventure waiting to happen.”